Apt Pupil (1998) on Netflix
In 1984 Southern California, sixteen-year-old Todd Bowden learns his neighbor is Kurt Dussander, a fugitive Nazi war criminal. Todd, drawn to Nazism, blackmails him into telling about the camps.
- Netflix3.0/5
- IMDb6.7/1044,672 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes53%
Trailer
Plot summary
Todd Bowden is a sixteen-year-old high school student in Southern California in 1984 whose interest lies in the history of Nazism. He comes to believe that his elderly neighbor, who lives under the name Arthur Denker, is Kurt Dussander, a former concentration camp commandant and a wanted war criminal. Todd goes to the man's house and uses what he knows to make him talk. Dussander yields and recounts his time at an extermination camp and what it was like to take part in genocide. As the two spend time together, Todd's schoolwork suffers and he loses interest in his girlfriend.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Apt Pupil (1998)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- During the $14 million production of Apt Pupil, several extras, some of them underage, filed a lawsuit alleging they were told to strip naked for a shower scene; no criminal charges were filed and the civil suit was dismissed for insufficient evidence.
- Producer Richard Kobritz met with James Mason to play Nazi war criminal Kurt Dussander, but Mason died of a heart attack in July 1984, and Richard Burton, also approached for the role, died that August.
- Stephen King sued to recover the film rights to Apt Pupil in 1995, then optioned them to Bryan Singer for $1 after reading his script and a then-unreleased copy of The Usual Suspects, arranging to be paid when the film came out.
- A 1987 attempt to film Apt Pupil, directed by Alan Bridges, shut down after ten weeks when its production company, Granat Releasing, ran out of funds; Rick Schroder had aged too much to resume a year later and 40 minutes of usable footage was abandoned.
- Kevin Pollak had been attached to play school guidance counselor Edward French before David Schwimmer got the part; Singer cast Schwimmer, then known for Friends, after seeing him in a Los Angeles stage production.
- John Ottman found no temporary music that worked for Apt Pupil and instead sought a mix of the scores of 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and 1941 (1979) to create an "otherworldly pastiche".
